


Shards of Glass

by Secre



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 11:33:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9605945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Secre/pseuds/Secre
Summary: A sister piece to Giving Up; the Boy-Who-Lived broke and the shards of glass of everyone else's life still need to be picked up. Because what is there to be said when so many people failed one boy so very, very badly.Welcome to the Shards of Glass that are left behind. Try not to cut yourself.





	1. The Lily's Sister

**Chapter 1: The Lily's Sister**

Every mother dreads the knock at the door from uniformed officers. It's a recurrent nightmare, one that comes in the dead of night and haunts me long into the morning. I've imagined their faces, their voices, their sincere sympathy so many times that sometimes it almost takes me by surprise when Dudley hammers down the stairs of a morning demanding bacon. I almost believe the horror of the nightmare.

We nearly lost him last year. Those dementor things that the boy was talking about. I've heard Lily talk about them as well. They suck out souls leaving nothing but the body. Two boys would have been found as good as dead. And there would have been that knock on the door. "We're sorry to have to inform you, Mrs Dursley, but there's been a terrible accident." From then on, the nightmare came more often. Nearly every night. I'd look into the eyes of some kindly policeman and see the face of my dead son. Or worse still.

For some reason it had never had occurred to me that those sorts have the same kind of calls to do.

Of course I knew what they were immediately. You can't mistake the robes and the ridiculous hats are a give-away. I remembered the old man from last year. But the barbed and cutting words that started to bubble up in my throat died when I looked into the faces at my doorstep. Both faces were lined and weathered. Their faces were haggard and there was true grief in both of their eyes. Before either of them said anything I knew, just knew that something horrific must have happened. And whatever it was, I didn't want to hear it. I didn't need to know. I swallowed hard before speaking.

"Is it not enough that I'm stuck with that boy in the holidays?" I bit out sharply, refusing to flinch back at the look in the old man's eyes. "I have no interest in having your kind come and badger me during term time as well."

I tried to close the door in their faces, but it was as if the door hit a solid invisible wall. Neither of them had moved. Neither of them had spoken. I just couldn't close my front door.

"Mrs Dursley," the headmaster spoke and his voice is the voice of my nightmares. Somehow his voice has been etched upon my very memory. Remember my last. The words from an envelope over a year ago. The day I nearly lost my Dudley. "We need to speak to you."

They walked past me, they walked into my own home without permission, and with a wave of a single hand the door slammed shut behind us. Standing in my own doorway, I was left to trail down the hallway and into the living room behind them. There were no niceties said and my throat was suddenly too dry to have offered them drinks even if I had wanted to.

"Mrs Dursley," he repeated my name but then stopped, almost as though he was at a loss for words. His cool blue eyes flickered towards the woman with him, but she didn't meet either of our gazes. "I'm sorry but we've got some terrible news to share with you. Harry Potter… Your nephew…"

"What has the irresponsible boy done now?" I bit out even more sharply than before, as if by making my words as cutting as possible, I could slice through this knot in my chest. "It can't be any worse than the usual."

But of course, it could. Each summer for the last few years, the boy has come back thinner and paler. Each year his nightmares get worse. Each year I shut it off. I never wanted this responsibility, I never wanted to care for him. I never asked for this. He is not my child. He is the child of Lily Damn Potter and her arrogant, offensive and insufferable waste of space of a husband. Every time he came home I saw the pain in his eyes, eyes that look so much like my sisters used to. Every year, that pain seemed to grow exponentially. But he has James Potter's face. And Lily's freakish talent.

"He's dead." The words are torn out of the woman's mouth as if by force and the house seems to shudder with the force of the grief and pain behind them. The pictures on the wall seem to shift slightly and the woman seems to draw herself tightly inward. "Mrs Dursley. Your nephew is dead. You don't have to be 'stuck with him' any longer. He's dead."

More words were said. Of course, more words were said. Few of them stuck with me though. The important ones did. The cutting charm in the middle of the night. The fact that he used that thrice damned freakery to take his own life. That it wasn't the dreaded Lord after all who killed him. The idiot boy did it all to himself. And the note he left. They handed me a copy. Apparently he'd left it on his bed and his roommates found it the following morning. Far too late.

The words that I'll remember though are those two words, said with such grief, such pain, such anguish. He's dead. Behind those words I heard all of the other words that the woman wanted to say. He's dead and it's your fault. He's dead and it's our fault. He's dead and it's my fault. Behind those words, those two simple, single syllable words, I can hear the guilt, the anger, the loathing and the despair. He's dead. He's dead and there is nothing in this universe I can do to bring him back.

I told Vernon that evening. His only words were 'Good riddance to bad rubbish', as he filled his mouth with beef. He didn't even bother to look up. And for a moment, just a flash of a moment, I wanted to scream at him, I wanted to throw his food at him and wipe that self-satisfied smirk off his face. I wanted to hurt him. But how could I? After all, I'd been no better than he had. I didn't have to take the child in. But I did. And in doing that, I made a choice. A choice I dragged Vernon along into. But a choice.

And so I'm sat in a cupboard of all places. A cupboard under the stairs, the cupboard where a child grew up. The cupboard where he was sent hungry and cold because of his freakishness. The cupboard we determined was a fit space for a young child to live. It's full of Dudley's junk now, piled on the bed and on the floor, but I cleared a space to sit. And I remember Lily's eyes. Those emerald, beautiful, life filled eyes. Those eyes that reminded everyone of Granddad.

Lily's eyes as they flashed with the joy and the wonder of this magical world that she was allowed admittance to and I was forbidden. Lily's eyes as they sparkled with excitement as she showed me her textbooks and her wand, her frantic explanations of everything she'd learned at that freakish school. My little sister, once more better than me. I remember Lily's eyes as she brought home that boy, that arrogant freak, filled with love and adoration. His self-satisfied smile as he looked down on me from on high.

After all, who would have a Petunia when they can have a Lily?

I hated her. I hated her for everything she could have that I couldn't. I hated that she got to see this whole marvellous, magical world that I would never be allowed entry into. I hated that everything was so easy for her. Just a wave of a wand and everything works out all right. Because it was never that easy for me. It was never that easy. I hated her. And I missed her. I missed the smart little girl who looked up to me. Who expected me to have all the answers. Because now I had none of the answers and she had all of them. She had a whole world of answers that I was never, ever going to be able to access. I hated her. I loved her. I hated that I loved her.

Lily's eyes. In James Potter's face. But Lily's eyes. I am never going to see my sister's eyes again. I am never going to see them flash, even if the only times I've seen that lately has been in anger or in fear. I am never going to see the emerald hew that I envied all the way through my childhood. They were yet another thing that Lily had that I didn't. I am never going to see her eyes again. Somehow, despite everything over all these years, that fact is more important than the fact that I will never have to look at James Potter's self-righteous face again.

My shoulders shake once, twice and suddenly I'm crying. I'm crying for a boy I hated. A boy I despised. I'm crying for the child whose life I made a living hell.

"Mum?" Dudley's voice outside the cupboard is filled with bewilderment. "Mum? Are you in the freaks cupboard? Are you crying?"

"I'm ok, Duds," I choke out between sobs, trying to get a handle on my treacherous body. "Everything is ok."

The door opens and my darling son stands framed in the entrance to the cupboard. I can't see his face from my position, he's too tall now and all I can see are his legs and his body. I imagine sitting here as a five-year-old, sitting in exactly this position as my husband screams down into the space. Emerald eyes filled with helpless tears. My shoulders shake uncontrollably. Yet I don't deserve the relief of crying.

"What's happened, Mum?" Dudley's voice is full of concern, of worry. He kneels down in front of the cupboard, his hand outstretched. "Why are you in the cupboard?"

"It's nothing to worry about, Dudders," I manage to say, attempting to smile at my beautiful son. The look in his eyes says I've fooled no one. "Mum's just getting a bit upset about nothing, that's all."

"It's about Harry." He surprises me by saying the boy's name so matter of factly. No scorn or hatred, no fear or anger. Not the freak. Just Harry. "I heard you talking to Dad. Harry's not coming back, is he?"

"No, Duds," I whisper. "Harry's never coming back. He… he…"

"He's dead." He finishes for me, almost calmly. "Was it those… Dementor things. Like before?"

It is so, so unbelievably tempting to lie to my son. To say that yes, something completely outside of our control killed the boy. I even open my mouth to speak the words and then I stop. I can't say them. I just can't. Because whilst there are some truly horrific things in that freakish world, there isn't anything more horrific than what actually killed the boy. Lily trusted me with her son, her bundle of joy. I could have shown him some affection. I could maybe have loved the boy. Perhaps I could have, if he didn't have his father's face and his mother's eyes and every time I looked at him, I saw what I could never be. What I could never have. And I can't tell my son that Dementor's killed his cousin. I can't tell him that it was an evil lord. I can't say that it wasn't our fault.

"No, Dudders." My voice wavers and shakes in a manner most unbecoming of a female. I can't seem to steady it. "No. He… he did it to himself."

"Oh."

That's all my boy says. And then he walks away. I hear his feet as he climbs the stairs and I feel the door as it slams shut behind him. Then silence. Until there's a smashing sound and I jolt upwards, my head hitting against the cupboard roof painfully hard. Climbing out there's another series of crashes, bangs and slams coming from above my head. Unsurprisingly, Vernon hasn't shifted himself to see what is going on. Can't interrupt his TV time, after all.

Following the noises to Dudley's bedroom, I knock at his door. There's no response other than the sounds of something else hitting the wall with velocity. The door shakes with the vibrations.

"Dudders? I'm coming in."

I open the door in trepidation, and look around at the utter carnage of the room. The TV, the consoles, everything I can see is in pieces. And Dudley sits down on the bed and just stares at it. His eyes meet mine and I can't bear the confusion and the pain that I can see in my precious, darling child's eyes. It's almost a mirror image of the pain that I have seen in Lily's emerald eyes for the last few years. That realisation cuts me to the heart. I move to put my arms around my son, but he pushes me away.

"Don't." His voice is gruff and pained. "Please. Don't."

His mouth opens as if to continue and then he shuts it sharply. Sitting down on the bed next to my child, I wait. Dudley was never the most patient of boys. And he can't stand silence.

"I wasn't…" His voice falters and breaks. "I wasn't very nice to him."

"No," I agree softly. "None of us were."

"He saved me. Last year. He saved me even though I was horrible to him." My boy looks up at me and my heart breaks anew. "I never said thank you. I never told him I was grateful. I should have."

"Yes." Once more there is nothing that I can do except agree. "There are lots of things we all should have done. There are lots of things I should have done."

"I think I need to be alone now, Mum."

His voice is soft but sure, more adult than I've heard him before. I nod silently, and back out of the room, closing the door with a soft click behind me.

What more is there to say? What more is there to discuss?

Lily's son. With her bright, sparkling emerald eyes. Eyes that had become dull and pained, tired and weary. James Potter's face. Too thin to be that insufferable gits face though. Too drawn and pale. I don't know what the boy went through these last years. I never bothered to ask. I heard him cry out in his sleep, but I never bothered to ask. _Sirius. Cedric. Don't hurt them. Come back. I love you._ Why didn't I bother to ask?

The boy didn't even mention us in his note. His last words, written in a shaky hand. Tears blotching the letters in random places. Ron, Hermione, Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, Professor Snape. Sirius and Cedric. All of those people had a place in his last words. He didn't mention us at all.

I pray that there isn't a heaven or a hell. I pray that there isn't a God. I pray that Lily is dead, that her soul doesn't still exist in some form. Because if she does, one day there is going to be a reckoning. And it doesn't matter what else I do now… I will deserve every last second of it.

I pray that there is an afterlife. I pray that Lily is able to see her son once more, that they have been joined together at last after so many years. I'll take my reckoning. When my day of judgement comes, I won't be judged by any God. I will be judged by my sister. I will be judged my mother and my father. I will stand before them and say, I killed your son. I killed your grandson. I killed my nephew.

I may not have held the knife. I, a mere muggle, may not have been capable of wielding that cutting charm. But that makes me no less responsible.

Walking back down the stairs and into the living room, I almost don't believe the words that come out of my mouth. And yet, they are right. They are the first right thing that I have done in nearly fifteen years.

"Vernon. We're getting a divorce."

There's no invisible wall stopping the door now. It closes with a meaty thunk.


	2. A Father's Sorrow

**Chapter 2: A Father's Sorrow**

Dear Minerva,

It is with a heavy heart that I pen this letter and yet I know that in the penning of it, I show myself to be the greatest coward of all. I should speak to you face to face, I should speak to Albus face to face and yet, I can't. I find myself writing to you instead. Were it Molly in my stead, she would have no issues with marching up to the gates of Hogwarts to face you both down. But Molly hasn't left the house in weeks and so there is no one to shoulder the responsibility for this other than myself. It is not a responsibility I take lightly and it is certainly not one I commit to without grave doubts and hesitation. However, I don't think I have a choice.

I am writing to inform you as Head of Gryffindor House and as Deputy Headmistress that Ginny and Ron won't be returning to Hogwarts this year. They probably won't be returning next year. I don't know if they will ever return. It is hard to see this family of mine that I care for so deeply tearing itself apart at the seams, and yet that is what it is doing. Ron is lost, broken, floundering in a sea of remorse and guilt despite what young Harry's note said. He's not always been the best of friends as teenage boys are wont to be, and that perhaps stabs at him more than anything else. The most heart-breaking thing of all is how he wonders if he could have changed things. If he'd have stood by Harry in the first task of that Triwizard Tournament, if he'd have just thumped Percy for Merlin's sake, if he'd have woken up sooner. If… if… if…So many if's.

But at the end of the day, there are no if's that matter anymore are there? Harry is gone, by his own choice and his own hand, with no-one there beside him to watch him leave us. And my boy is breaking. His heart, his soul, his mind is breaking. I can't expect him to go back to the dormitory where his best friend left the last words he would ever write. I can't expect him to walk those hallways and those corridors or sit in the classes that he should be sitting in with Harry. I can't do that to my boy, Minerva. I just can't. Maybe Molly could. She always was firmer than me, stronger than me. Me? I just want my boy to stop hurting. And returning to Hogwarts will hurt him more than anything I can think of right now.

Is it a curse of mine to watch my children break? Ron is the second, you know. And I'm even more helpless now than I was with Percy, because this time it isn't my fault. I wasn't the one who broke Ron, it wasn't my words that pushed him to this juncture. No. It was a boy I loved as a son, who I would have taken in as one of my own. I tried, you know. I tried to get Albus to let young Harry stay here more often. I know Molly tried. Molly pushed even harder than I did. But we didn't know enough, we weren't well enough informed, it was for the child's own safety that he had to stay with those relatives. His safety.

Did he tell you about the bars, Minerva? The bars that my sons pulled out of his window when Harry was twelve years old? My thoughtless, reckless and utterly irresponsible sons who should have known better. Did you know that my boys flew a car out to Privet Drive in the middle of the night to rescue my Harry James Potter? It was the first time I'd seen the boy. Fred and George told me and I thought they were making it up, trying to get out of trouble. I thought they were exaggerating. I asked Ron last week. They weren't making it up, Minerva. The muggles put bars on my surrogate son's window. The barred his door and they put food through a flap that they use to feed animals through. Animals. He was twelve years old.

Did he tell you about the cupboard, Minerva? The cupboard that he grew up in despite those relatives having a spare bedroom? The cupboard under the stairs that his Hogwarts letter was addressed to? Ron was the one who mentioned that to us. Molly took it up with Albus and he said he had handled it. I don't know how those relatives of his managed to raise a boy with such kindness of spirit, such gentleness of heart and yet with such a fierce, protective nature, I really don't. He should never have turned out the way he has. By all rights and purposes he should have been bitter, callous, cruel even. Not kind, considerate and humble. I could go on, but I'm too tired. I'm too tired to even be angry anymore.

I think you loved the boy, Minerva. I think you loved him as Lily and James' son. You may even have loved him for his brash, reckless, irrepressible nature. Or perhaps for his gentle, caring and self-sacrificing attitude. I truly do believe that you loved the boy. And I believe you are mourning for him. But I have to wonder if you ever bothered to know the boy. Truly, fully know him. Because I don't think that he was brash, reckless and irresponsible because he was a typical Gryffindor. Molly and I, we've had many discussions about our Harry over the years, but it is only now that we have come to understand that he truly never realised how much he was actually worth.

Harry never learned to mindlessly respect authority because the authority he grew up with was cruel and pointlessly, randomly unfair. He learned to obey in sight because that was safe. But he learned to do his homework by torchlight under his duvet because his relatives wouldn't let him do it in the day. He learned to sneak around, to hide from them and to find ways around authority, because authority has never been fair. Authority has never been just to him. Authority has never been even handed. And I have to wonder whether Hogwarts showed him anything different really. Was authority ever fair? Did punishments fall upon those who deserved them? Were Hogwarts Professors permitted to bully students within their own classrooms? I think you know the answers to those questions as well as I do.

But more importantly, how often did Harry sacrifice something; his choice, his freedom, his very life, for someone else? For the school, for Hagrid, for my daughter, for my son, for a girl who he didn't even like very much at the time but later became his best friend, for a mass-murderer on the run from Azkaban. For the sister of a foreign girl on the opposing team to himself. For Cedric. For Cedric's father. For Sirius. When did he ever do anything for himself? When he did, he killed himself. What does that say about his self-worth? All these times we celebrated his bravery or berated his reckless attitude, did any one of us ever take him to one side and ask him why? Did any one of us explain to him that it wasn't his job to save the world? That the adults would look after him?

But honestly, Minerva, I think Hogwarts has failed my children badly. Perhaps Molly and I need to take a level of responsibility here as well, but I don't think anyone could argue that Hogwarts has not been a safe and secure home for my four youngest children. The twins perhaps are a rule unto themselves, but this time I think they had the right idea last year. Hogwarts was not safe for my children and they were right to leave it behind. Hogwarts hadn't been safe for quite some time. How many disasters have my children so narrowly dodged over the years? They courted death no less than three times in their first year alone to hear Ron tell the tales now.

Tales told through butterbeer, tears and when Molly's not around, a touch of firewhiskey. After the first evening, I have tried to avoid Molly being around if I'm honest, Minerva. If she knew a fraction of the danger our boys had been exposed to these last few years… I thought the Triwizard Championship was bad enough. If it had been Ron exposed to a Hungarian Horntail, you'd better believe that he'd have been out of Hogwarts faster than you could say fire whiskey, let alone drink it. We said then, you remember. We argued for Harry. But Albus knew better. And so he had to face up to the challenges alone.

And because of that, my little boy is breaking. Oh, I know, my Ronniekins isn't so little anymore. But he'll always be my little boy. All of them will be. That is the curse and the joy of fatherhood. I get to see these wonderful boys grow into fantastic young men and yet they are always my babies. And he is falling apart. His whole world has come apart at the seams because his whole life revolved around Harry. From the day he met Harry, Ron couldn't talk about anyone else. He used to write home. Sporadically, but he'd write. And it was always Harry this, Harry that. Since that fateful train ride six years ago, they have been closer than brothers, and brothers are something I know quite a lot about. I have enough sons to be quite the expert on the matter. Harry and Ron were as close as Fred and George most of the time. They were twins in all but name, birthday and mother. We'd have fixed the latter for them, if we'd have been permitted.

Of course, at times, Ron has been resentful of his best friend. At times he thought he hated him. Because wherever Harry was, Ron walked in his shadow. Harry shone with a light that Ron could never rival. He was always the side-kick and never the hero. Always the backup. Never the centre of the story. And that stung his pride. Just like Harry's wealth did. The fact that Harry could throw galleons around and barely notice and Ron, well, couldn't. None of us can. I've never been successful enough and we have far too many children to ever be rich. And that stings Ron more than it stings any of my other children. Harry seemed to have so much, so easily that Ron had to work for; the fame, the love, the wealth. It's natural for a teenage boy to be jealous of that kind of attention.

But you see, now that Harry isn't here, Ron is constantly in the shadows of an absence of light. An utter absence of Harry. It's as if the very sun has been swallowed leaving only darkness in its wake. He still talks to Harry, you know. He mutters or makes wise-crack remarks and waits for the resulting snicker and I watch his face fall when he remembers it isn't coming. He saves things to share with his best friend instinctively. Ron talks to him as if he was there because Harry is the only person my son knows how to talk to. He stopped talking to me and Molly years ago. Losing Harry has left a gigantic hole in his chest and I don't know if it is ever going to heal. I don't know if it ever can.

Losing Harry has left a gigantic hole in my entire family, not just Ron. Harry saved my baby girl, he saved my life, he defended the honour of my family. Harry became a member of my family. That is something that can never change. I am honoured that he chose my family to love, to trust, to come to. I am so grateful for that love, and not only because over the course of the last six years he's saved more of my family than should be possible. I wish we'd been able to keep his love and his friendship longer. I wish he wasn't gone and not just for Ron. I wish I had been there for him. I wish he felt able to reach out to me. Reach out to Molly. Reach out to anyone.

We'd have been by his side in a heartbeat had he asked us to. We owe our lives, our family to that boy and that was a debt that never could have been repaid. I had looked forward to the day when I would welcome him into the family formally, the day when he would walk down the aisle with my baby girl. But even without that, Harry was already like family to me. He was already as much a son as my own sons. And so my children have not just lost their love or their best friend, they are mourning the loss of a brother. To have lost him in this way, to his own hand, is almost a burden too much for them to bear.

At the end of the day, I cannot know what made a child I loved as a son choose that hopeless, final act. I have no way of knowing what thoughts were going through his head. All I can think of is how alone he must have felt. How bitterly, helplessly alone he must have felt as he wrote those final words. I haven't seen the note. But my Ron recited it to me. From memory. Tears streaming down his face, voice cracking under the pressure and the strain, eyes filled with grief, pain and shame he recited it to me from memory, Minerva. How many times has my boy read that final letter to be able to do that? Or is it simply that the sight of it has burned its way into his very mind and soul? The last words of his dearest, most precious friend.

Ron will never hate Harry, you know. Not even after this. Not even now, when his heart has all but been pulled out of his chest and carved into pieces. The time they spent together will be forever engraved in my boys heart, forever enshrined upon his mind. In time maybe the sharpest, the most jagged edges of his pain will wear away, maybe he won't cut himself so easily on the cruel fragments of his memories. That time isn't now though. It won't be tomorrow, it won't be next week, it won't even be next month. And I am going to give my son room to mourn, to grieve and to feel whatever he needs to feel. I will let no man take any more from my boy. Not while I am still breathing.

So I'm sorry, Minerva. I'm sorry that I have not the courage to say these words to your face. But Ron will not be returning to Hogwarts and neither will Ginny. I do not trust Hogwarts to keep them safe. I just wish that I had done this last year. I wish we had taken this step then and perhaps avoided all that has befallen us since. I wish beyond all wishes that I had spoken to the boy last summer; any fool could see how much he was struggling. I wish I had not assumed that Albus or you had it all in hand.

I wish things had turned out differently. However, the time for wishing is past. The time for action is here. And now, I must act. I must protect my children as I have failed to do thus far. Hogwarts will take no more from them.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur Weasley


End file.
